Daedalic Entertainment's Deponia 2: Chaos on Deponia is now available for purchase from Mac Game Store. The sequel to Deponia, the adventure title follows the exploits of Rufus in a self contained story designed to appeal both to fans of the original and newcomers to the series.

With this long-expected sequel to the critically highly acclaimed and lavishly praised Deponia, the player enters round two. Chaos on Deponia turns out to be even wackier than its predecessor and instantly puts the player under its spell.

After the events on Deponia, it seems that Rufus came to his senses. He's grown prudent, amicable, kind and caring, without any intention to cause major mayhem just to further his own selfish ends. It seems he is far from chaining himself to flaming saw blades, training torpedo-dolphins or foraging through platypus nests. Or is he?

Ultimately it's a flaming saw blade grounding Goal on Deponia again. By accident, her consciousness gets split into three parts and stored to three different discs.

Now it's on Rufus once again to convince all three parts of Goal, utilizing his remarkable charming wits, to become one again, venture to Eylsium with her and save Deponia from certain doom while he's at it.

The second adventure on Deponia tells a unique, self-contained story playable without further knowledge of the first installment. Fans of the first game discover new aspects of familiar characters' backgrounds and see open questions answered.

Features:

Unique world honoring the tradition of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Matt Groening.

Inside Mac Games has posted a new review of Iceberg Interactive's Endless Space - Admiral Edition. The 4X space strategy title gives players the chance to take control of one of eight civilizations struggling for galactic dominion.

Here's an excerpt:

Endless Space also plays quite well. The overall strategy of the game actually requires that you remain relatively peaceful for most of your race's history. If you declare war left and right, you'll miss out on trade routes and other profitable opportunities. In addition, even the smallest of ships can blockade your systems, so starting a war without a proper series of fleet blockades on strategic choke points can end up leading to your bankrupt husk being slowly starved into oblivion. Normal difficulty will kill you if you aren't careful.

This is mainly due to the fact that the computer AI is excellent at managing the galaxy view. It prioritizes the most valuable planets, pushes research towards colonization and fleet speed during peace time, and even modifies and retrofits its ships to be effective against your choice of defensive and offensive weaponry. There are some ways to confuse it and reduce its effectiveness (like having one module of each weapon variety), but overall the AI is excellent at responding to your strategies with its own.

Blizzard Entertainment recently announced a ladder reset for Diablo II. At the end of each ladder season all participating ladder characters are changed to normal characters. To join in the next season players have to create a new ladder character.

It’s that time again! All characters and items being converted to non-ladder will remain intact, but once converted these characters will no longer have access to ladder content such as creating ladder-only rune words.

This ladder reset, like all those before it, creates a clean slate where all ladder characters begin at level 1 with no previous items to help them. To participate, simply wait until the Diablo II realms return to service on November 6, log in to Battle.net, and tick the “Ladder Character” checkbox when creating a new character. You can track ladder character leveling progress by clicking on the Ladder button from the main Diablo II in-game Battle.net interface.

For more information on ladder characters please visit the Arreat Summit.

Adventure Classic Gaming has posted a new review of Kalypso Media Digital's Anna. The horror adventure game takes players on a puzzle-based hunt through an abandoned and seemingly haunted sawmill in the Italian countryside.

From the review:

So, what is Anna? It is a classic adventure game, rendered in gorgeous 3D graphics with lush visuals and brilliant sound direction that will engage you early and chill you later. It is a brief adventure, although your mileage may vary depending on how long you are willing to endure its shortcomings. The game is full of the usual adventure tropes: you have an inventory, you can combine items, and you will have to solve puzzles to get the story to move on. You will be investigating a haunted house to uncover the mystery or not. Unlike other games with only 2.5D graphics, you can pan the camera in any direction, turn around, and even sidestep.

What is most remarkable about Anna is the game's art direction and attention to detail. While blundering about a haunted house certainly is not new to the adventure game genre, the realism that Dreampainters has taken to immerse you in this house is unique and impressive. The developer has gone to extreme lengths to recreate an actual sawmill beside a mountain range in Europe. I wonder, though, if the developer is also trying to make a statement on some sort of meta-irony of starting a game outside a white boarded house.